Senate Passes PA Puppy Mill Bill

The Senate and the House on Wednesday approved a bill that gives most commercial kennel owners an additional three years to comply with an array of new regulations to make their kennels more humane. The bill also gives the state agriculture secretary the power to extend that waiver even longer.

But even with provisions that supporters said water down the legislation, it still was an advancement for animal welfare in Pennsylvania, they declared.

''This is the day that we eliminate'' Pennsylvania's reputation ''as the puppy mill capital of the East,'' said Rep. James Casorio, D-Westmoreland, the prime sponsor. ''The mistreatment of thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs kept in deplorable and inhumane [conditions] will no longer stand.''

The bill has been changed from the original, but at least this is a beginning, you have to start somewhere.

Hopefully, what Pennsylvania has begun will force every state to take a look at their laws, or lack of, so that humane treatment of dogs in puppy mills will be the norm rather than the exception.